Inscrutable, mystical, nonsensical Oriental.'Īn observant son might question the value of following his father's example, but young Willis is not the most observant character on the planet and has fallen prey to the lure of freedom from constraints imposed by his being relegated to the Generic Asian Man ghetto. Interior of Chinatown, taking the work he could get. Just some mystical Eastern force, some Wizened Chinaman.'Īnd what happens when he ages out of the Kung Fu Guy role? As the novel begins, Willis's father is relegated to bit parts like Old Asian Cook or Old Asian Guy Smoking, 'a leading man trapped in the body of an extra. He is told: You are a legend,' but the problem with being a legend is that he is 'no longer a person.

Suey, jump-kick vegetables into a thousand pieces. Willis's father, also an actor, had reached that pinnacle earlier in his career but found himself trapped by dehumanizing scripts and stereotypes: 'They ask him to put on silly hats. You play the part of Willis Wu, a struggling actor who can't become the protagonist in his own life story until he marches up the ranks of bit-part roles from Generic Asian Man to Dying Asian Man to Special Guest Star to Recurring Ethnic to the coveted Kung Fu Guy-but is the climb worth the cost? As a child he'd revered the kung-fu stars he'd seen on television, actors like his father who seemed to defy gravity, 'not inevitably bound by the rules of physics like regular mortals, rather by choice, returning to earth only if and when they feel like it and even then in their own manner.' Weeks of confinement spawn the desire to roam free and unfettered, but what if the illusion of freedom only blinds us to our continued confinement? Charles Yu asks this question in his novel Interior Chinatown, a lively and entertaining romp through a mass-mediated world in which everyone is so busy acting roles that reality itself seems to have slipped off into the cheap seats to munch popcorn while taking in the performance.

Interior of chinatown